Daniel Dae Kim is taking a look at Asian representation onscreen in Hollywood with his family and one fan-favourite series keeps coming up short.
17.05.2022 - 20:53 / deadline.com
Making its first upfronts pitch to advertisers as a merged company, TelevisaUnivision delivered a message of balanced strategy to ad buyers in an hour-long presentation at New York’s Javits Center.
“Here’s one thing you’re not going to hear this week: Our linear business is on fire,” ad sales and marketing chief Donna Speciale said. She pointed to 7% growth across the company’s portfolio, and 18% at its flagship broadcast network, maintaining, “Everyone else is either flat or declining.”
At the same time, TelevisaUnivision has made several moves in streaming, acquiring assets and positioning itself with a two-tiered new service, the free Vix and subscription Vix+. “We didn’t need to turn to streaming to save our TV business,” Speciale said. “We saw an opportunity.”
Last January, Univision and Grupo Televisa closed their $4.8 billion combination, which saw the media assets of Televisa come under Univision’s control and a number of prominent minority investors enter the fold. Univision had been taken private back in 2007, in a $13.7 billion deal in 2007 led by media billionaire Haim Saban.
Former Viacom CFO Wade Davis now runs TelevisaUnivision as CEO and led the winning bid for Univision, and has taken steps to stabilize the ship. Among the cable TV vets recruited to the new company’s management ranks is Speciale, who formerly headed sales at Turner.
Speciale earned the heartiest applause of the upfront presentation, taking part in a video segment in which she gamely learned to salsa dance from two on-screen pros. “That shows you the value of being able to trust a partner,” she said.
Sebastián Yatra, known for singing “Dos Oruguitas,” one of the songs on the chart-topping soundtrack of Disney’s Oscar-winning animated film
Daniel Dae Kim is taking a look at Asian representation onscreen in Hollywood with his family and one fan-favourite series keeps coming up short.
New Yorkers now have the option to choose “X” as a gender marker on their driver’s licences and other State issued forms of identification. Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, made the announcement on Friday, with the initiative going into effect as part of the State’s Gender Recognition Act, on June 24.She continued, “Every person, regardless of their gender identity or expression, deserves to have an identity document that reflects who they are. My administration remains committed to ensuring that New York is a place of value, love and belonging for members of the LGBTQ+ community.” Historic day at the DMV! @Govkathyhochul announced New Yorkers can now choose “x” as a gender marker on their photo ID.
Brandy has delivered a rapid-fire freestyle over the Fergie-sampling beat for Jack Harlow‘s hit ‘First Class’, a fortnight after joking that she would “murk [Harlow] in rap”.Earlier this month, Harlow appeared on New York radio station Hot 97 and, during an on-air game, wasn’t able to identify Brandy’s 1998 track ‘Angel In Disguise’ (from her hit second album, ‘Never Say Never’). That’s despite hosts Ebro Darden, Laura Stylez and Peter Rosenberg giving him hints, one of which led to Harlow revealing he didn’t know Brandy and Ray J were siblings.After the footage went viral, Brandy tweeted that she would “murk this dude in rap at 43 on his own beats then sing [his] ass to sleep”.
TMZ.WATCH BELOW: Rihanna announced her pregnancy in a full face of Fenty BeautySources revealed to the publication that the pair had given birth to a baby boy on May 13, but no name has yet been released, which is keeping us on the edge of our seats.The superstar couple announced they were expecting in January 2022, after months of speculation that Rihanna might be pregnant.Taking to the streets of New York, they had photos snapped of them walking in light snowdrift, with Rihanna’s bulging belly already pushing through her puffer jacket.Congrats to Rihanna!Fans were convinced from looking at the announcement that the couple would be having a girl, based on the way Riri was dressed in pink.She’s also spoken about wanting to mother girls before.“I’m a Black woman. I came from a Black woman, who came from a Black woman, who came from a Black woman and I’m going to give birth to a Black woman.
Nick Vivarelli International CorrespondentLou Ferrigno is set to play a murderous, cannibalistic pig farmer known as “The Hermit” in U.S.-based Italian director Salvatore Sclafani’s chiller of the same title that will mark Ferrigno’s first role playing a creature since CBS TV series “The Incredible Hulk.”Shooting is set to start in August in Syracuse, N.Y., on the horror film with an undercurrent of fun and quirky irony that will see Ferrigno making and selling jerky made of human flesh.“Most people are surprised that I’ve never really entered the horror space before now,” Ferrigno said in a statement for Variety. “When I was a kid I was fascinated with the monsters of the time like Dracula and Frankenstein.
Fyre Festival founder Billy McFarland has been released early from prison.McFarland was serving a six-year sentence after pleading guilty to multiple counts of fraud, including for the disastrous festival in the Bahamas in 2017.He spent six months of his sentence alone in solitary confinement after taking part in the recording of a podcast.According to TMZ, McFarland has now been released from the Milan Federal Correctional Institution in Milan, Michigan, where he was being held.He is now under the management of Residential Reentry Management New York – the administrative office overseeing halfway houses located in southern New York, eastern New York and New Jersey, according to The Hollywood Reporter.McFarland’s release date from the halfway house is currently set for August 30.Back in 2020, he requested an early release from his six-year prison sentence due to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic, but his request was turned down.McFarland’s release comes after Martin Shkreli, the disgraced “pharma bro” who famously bought Wu-Tang Clan‘s ‘Once Upon A Time In Shaolin’ for $2million (£1.4m), was also released early from prison. Shkreli was serving a seven-year sentence after being found guilty of securities fraud following claims he defrauded investors in former hedge funds in 2017.
John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent“The Bourne Identity” helmer Doug Liman is attached to direct the adaptation of a chapter from acclaimed nonfiction book “Rise And Kill First.” It details how Israel’s Mossad reached out in desperation to former Nazi Waffen SS lieutenant colonel Otto Skorzeny, a favourite of Hitler’s -branded by British intelligence services as “the most dangerous man in Europe,” to thwart an existential threat to Israel’s existence.The stranger-than-fiction true story is set up at New York’s Story Syndicate (“I’ll Be Gone In the Dark,” “Britney vs Spears,” “Becoming Cousteau”), headed by Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning Dan Cogan and Liz Garbus, and at Israel’s Abot Hameiri, producer of “Shtisel,” “The Attaché” and “Power Couple.” A Fremantle company, its co-founder, Guy Hameiri, assembled the world-class direction-production team. A Cannes Festival alum with 2010’s Palme d’Or contender “Fair Game,” Liman will also oversee development of the limited series.
Gayle King and her colleagues will be following Johnny Depp's $50 million defamation lawsuit against Amber Heard until its conclusion. However, the veteran newswoman says there's no positive light to the entire spectacle.King and her CBS Mornings co-stars Nate Burleson and Tony Dokoupil walked the carpet at The Hollywood Reporter's Annual Most Powerful People in New York Media event on Tuesday, and they spoke with ET about the court case that has been dominating the spotlight in recent months.«It's all very sad to me,» King said of the ongoing case, which has been broadcast on TV since the trial began in April. I don't know how anybody wins in that case.
Echo,” a new MCU series starring Alaqua Cox, has begun production, Disney has announced.The series is a spinoff of last year’s Disney+ Marvel show “Hawkeye,” which featured the debut of Cox as Maya Lopez. Created by David Mack and Joe Quesada in 1999 as a supporting character for the superhero Daredevil, Maya Lopez, aka Echo, is a deaf Cheyenne woman with Olympic level athletic skills and the ability to perfectly copy people’s movement. In “Hawkeye,” the character was depicted as the leader of the Tracksuit Mafia, a gang of criminals working under Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).
#1 New York Times bestselling author Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) has entered into a first-look production agreement with Universal Pictures, which will see him produce three features for the studio alongside Anonymous Content.
Production has officially begun on Season 2 and HBO is giving fans a first look at the set in a new photo of Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector above. Shooting is underway in Rhode Island and New York state.
CBS has ordered three new series for the 2022-23 broadcast season: “East New York,” “So Help Me Todd” and “Fire Country.”In “East New York,” Amanda Warren stars as Regina Haywood, “the newly promoted deputy inspector of East New York, a working-class neighborhood at the edge of Brooklyn. She leads a diverse group of officers and detectives, some of whom are reluctant to deploy her creative methods of serving and protecting in the midst of social upheaval and the early seeds of gentrification,” per a logline from the network.It costars Kevin Rankin, Jimmy Smits, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Richard Kind, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Lavel Schley and Olivia Luccardi.It’s from writers and executive producers William Finkelstein and Mike Flynn and director and EP Michael M.
More than 20 years in the making, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis has set its star cast. Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel (Game of Thrones and Fast X), Jon Voight and Laurence Fishburne have been set for the main roles. Fishburne began his career with Coppola at the tender age of 14 in Apocalypse Now. Legend has it he was of legal age when the film got released.